Remembering MF Husain

“I have known Baba (MF Hussain) for almost 20 years, much before my niece Reema got married to Owais (son of MF Hussain). While I called him Baba, he called me Mamujan (Reema addressed me so). He loved talking mad, not calculated intellectual talk. That was what brought us together.

WHENEVER he conceived a film, he’d come home to share the idea. He narrated the subject of Meenaxi- A Tale Of Three Cities in his style, ‘A nawab meets a girl in Hyderabad, falls in love with her. Here I see a lot of cycles, wheels and kites. The girl then goes to Jaisalmer where the nawab meets her again. Here, I see a lot of matkas, birds and women in colourful clothes. The nawab then meets her in Prague. Here, I see a ballet of horses. How’s the story?’ I replied, ‘Excellent! Don’t worry about logic Baba, make the film the way you see it. When you try to make it logical, you spoil it (as in Gaja Gamini)’. When he had conceived Gaja Gamini he had sketched a woman, a temple, a lantern and a cow to convey his idea. The song Yeh rishta kya kehlata hai (Meenaxi....) was written by him while he was convalescing in hospital.

Baba took to painting after 1947. ‘After India became free, I became an artist. When I saw the lights on the eve of Independence, I felt azad (free)’, he once confided. Before that he used to paint posters and toys. He used to paint film posters near Taj Talkies at Grant Road. Across the road was a dhaba where a middle-aged aged lady sold meals. Baba could barely afford that. The lady then suggested that he make her paintings, which she’d send to her relatives. In return she fed him khichdi. After a while Baba went to Kolkata. When he returned he found she was dead and all the paintings were lying in her house. She didn’t have any relatives. It was her way of helping him without hurting his self-esteem.

I don’t know the reason why he didn’t wear shoes. But the story goes that once one of his sons had asked him to get a pair. Baba couldn’t afford nice ones so he got him tennis shoes. But on reaching home, he was shocked to find the child had fallen off the building and died. It’s believed that’s why he didn’t fancy wearing shoes. I don’t know how true this is though. He never talked about it.

He loved writing and more so on streets where he could observe people. Once while we were in Kolkata, he took me to an Irani restaurant in the city’s crowded area. The restaurant owner knew him. He had painted on the hotel’s wall behind the counter. Even in London, he took me to areas, which were dilapidated. He showed me corners where he had spent 10 hours at a stretch writing. They didn’t know who he was. He’d keep having tea, coffee and write as people passed by. He once sat on a railway station in Paris and wrote part of his memoir there. He loved poetry and preserved tattered books because he had some thought or verse scribbled there.

He left India because he was disillusioned. He’d say, ‘Hindustan meri ragonmein hai (Hindustan flows in my veins)! He missed India very much. He’d talk of butter toast, cutting chaai, bun maska, kheema, paya... He loved rich food but ate very little. He’d invite the Bori community for a breakfast of kheema and sheer korma on Eid while he was in India. Even in Dubai, he’d call people from the Indian community.

Last year on the eve of December 31, he ended up creating a 30 feet tall painting of the Ramayana. He said, ‘Mujh mein Valmiki aagaye (I was possessed by Valmiki)!’ He claimed, ‘No one has painted the Ramayana as much as me’. He had spent eight years in Benares, sat on the banks of the Ganges and heard Valmiki’s katha. The last time I saw him sketch was in a restaurant in Dubai. But when we wanted to see it, he hid it by covering it with his hands. He didn’t want us to see it till he had completed it. He was such a child!

He was a natty dresser and had a personality to match his tastes. But within two minutes he’d dirty his sherwani. His hands would always have colour and so his legs. He used to be a coloured man! He was a nomad. He had tickets in his pocket for Delhi, Kolkata, France, Dubai... he’d leave his house for something and reach somewhere else. He was a nomad even in Dubai. Baba didn’t require a bed to sleep. He could sleep anywhere, even in his driver’s house. Sometimes, he’d take a nap in the car in the afternoon for 15 minutes. He enjoyed sleeping in a moving car. He had a Bugatti, Ferrari and Mercedes. But he hardly used them. But he loved hanging around in his Jaguar. He was happy sitting on a bench as he was in five star hotel. He was rich and yet not rich.

He loved films. He’d like some moments and then keep seeing the film again and again. Band Baaja Baarat was showing in Sharjah. He’d take people from Dubai to Sharjah to watch it. He liked Gary Cooper and said anyone who could come close to him would be Sanjay Dutt. He also liked Dilip Kumar. He liked the faces of Meena Kumari, Madhubala, Naseem Banu, Gayatri Devi, Mother Teresa and Sarojini Naidu. He’d say, ‘I’ve a weakness for women. I’ve a very halka image of my mother (she died when he was a child) and my search for her is on’. Since he was from Pandharpur, he spoke fluent Marathi and his mother used to wear a Navvari saree.

He was a romantic and said he carried his heart on his sleeve. He once shared, ‘I used to sit near a pond in Indore and paint. There was this tribal girl who’d come there. I used to speak to her and even painted her. But when I returned after a few months she was married. She was my first love.”

He had three projects in hand – 100 years of Indian cinema from Dadasaheb Phalke to present times, Indian civilisation from Mohenjo Daro to Mahatma Gandhi and Islamic civilsation from the Babylonian days. Once he remarked, ‘There was a time when I used to earn so that I could eat. But today, people earn so that they can afford my paintings’. He also said, ‘Joh din aisewaiseguzarewohiaajkaamaaye (days spent in doing nothing, just wandering have proved valuable)’.

Few days before he passed away, he had invited me to Dubai. He said, ‘If I come to your house in Mumbai, there will be hungama, aapkeghar police aajayegi’. He was at the airport to receive me. We reached home around midnight. Then he wanted to read out an essay to me. That was his energy. The essay was titled Kya Sau Saal Kya Ek Baras. He had written it on the occasion of completing his 100th birthday according to the Muslim calendar. He started off by saying that people ask God, ‘Yeh sausaal ka putla ab taktootanahin (this 100-year-old clay idol, hasn’t broken yet)?’ He then wrote of his mind, which was ruled by his heart, about how his mouth said less but his ears listened more. Finally, he wrote about his feet, ‘Yeh bahutchalein hai, bahutdaudehain, magarkabhibhaagenahin (they walked a lot, ran as much, but never fled)’.

When he was around 88, I remember asking him, if he’d like to relive certain portions of his life. He replied, ‘If I go back I’ll get a chance to meet people who were once close to me. But the adventure of tomorrow is so great that I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward... another 20 years’. MF Hussain seemed a permanent fixture, someone who’d be there even after me, after my kids... Óh God he’s not dead!”

ABOUT M F HUSAIN

· Maqbool Fida Husain was born on September 17, 1915 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra to Zunaib and Fida Husain, who hailed from a Bohra family. He lost his mother when he was a very young child.

· He moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1935 with the dream of becoming an artist. His initial years were difficult. He managed to get a job of painting billboards and posters for Bollywood movies. During this time, he also worked for a toy company designing and building toys.

· He held his first serious exhibition in 1947 at the Bombay Art Society. India gained independence in August the same year, and the partition of India and Pakistan had a profound impact on his career.

· During that time, a group of young artists, including Husain, wanted to encourage the development of Indian avant-garde art and popularise Indian art on the international scenario. The political chaos and violence following the independence of India proved to the catalyst that led to the forming The Progressive Artist's Group in Bombay in December, 1947.

· Some of the major themes he painted on were related to prominent personalities like mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi. He drew inspiration from Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Paintings of Indian urban and rural life were also recurring motifs.

· During the early 1950s he went to Europe for the first time and did a barefoot grand tour. He also held his first solo exhibition in Zurich. While in Europe he met other famous painters such as Picasso, Matisse and Paul Klee. He ventured into filmmaking and made his first film, Through the Eyes of a Painter, in 1967, which was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival.

· Some of the major works he painted are Vishwamitra (1973) and Passage Through Human Space, a series of 45 watercolors, which he completed in the mid-1970s.

· In 2006, he was charged with ‘hurting sentiments of people’ because of his nude portraits of Hindu deities. He left India and went on a self-imposed exile.

· After leaving India, he spent his later years mainly in London and in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He had a strong desire to return to India but could not do so. He was offered citizenship by Qatar in 2010 which he accepted.

· He died on 9 June 2011, in London, England. He was 95.

Meanwhile, remembering the artist, good friend Ila Pal also has a lot to reveal. A young Ila, first saw Husain in the doorway of the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai in 1955. While the rain lashed its wrath outside, Husain vented his creative fury onto the canvas. “Oblivious of me, he continued painting for an hour,” she recalls. Six years later, in 1961, she met the celebrity painter at his studio at Bhulabhai Desai Institute. She recalls him as ‘the tall wiry man, with a salt-and-pepper-beard’. It was the beginning of a journey together, between a student and a master, which evolved to a close friendship. Ila has written five books out of which two are on the iconic painter. The two books that Pal wrote on Husain are separated by 23 years. When he was almost 80, Ila wrote the first book Beyond The Canvas: An Unfinished Portrait of M.F. Husain. The second book has her observations of him and also the conversations they shared. “He was my muse. He shaped my life, my attitude. I’ve not seen anyone paint like him, live like him,” she says. “I’d try to get close to his mastery. If I saw him getting up at 5am and beginning to paint, I’d want to match that. Only to find him getting up at 3am the next day. He considered himself a student all through his life,” she says.